Cassette 1: Spring 1993/Transcript
This is the official transcript for the episode which can also be accessed for free at'' patreon.com/withinthewires'' SIDE A Sigrid, I hope you get this tape without too much trouble. I did my best to disguise both its source and its sender, in the hope that it wouldn’t get flagged. I hope you haven’t been too worried – you know I can look after myself, don’t you? You know I’ll always come back for you. You are old enough now to know that, I think, you are what, 19? 19 is old enough to have faith in your mother. I went away once for a while, when you were two or three, and when I got back the rest of the family were full of stories about how you wept for your mama. “She thought you had stopped existing,” they laughed, “she thought you were vanished forever.” It wasn’t funny at the time, because trauma is real for a child. There’s no way to tell a small child, an infant really, that their reality is so much smaller than everyone else’s. But in time you have come to know how much I love you, and how even when I am not near you, I am with you. I will be gone and you will know that I will return. You understand how the world works now. And you still have the family. Our family. Our Cradle I’ve told you that you don’t have to worry about me, and you don’t, but I do need to let you know that the reason you haven’t heard from me is that I was arrested. I was arrested because of outstanding queries over my whereabouts, obviously, because I don’t check-in with the government offices. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this – you certainly have no reason to be aware of it having grown up in the Cradle – but in the rest of the world, outside our community, people are required to check in every few years to update the Society on, well, their well-being. They have to make sure their address is registered correctly, you understand, and confirm who they’re living with, if anyone. They also must update the Society on how they are progressing in their jobs, and advise them if they’d like to change careers, so that someone can help them find something new. They must register any children who have been born, and children must be sent to government centers. I will not have you or any of our Cradle family sent to a government training center. Obviously you do not have to worry about these regulations – that is one of the privileges of having been born to someone like me, who had no intention of notifying the Society of your existence. So. They do know I exist, however – my mother did not have the foresight yours did, although she realised her mistake just a few months after I was born . No matter. It is just a cross she left me to bear. I was spotted in Oslo and called in for questioning. Clearly I would not answer any of their questions, so I was arrested for obstruction and imprisoned, pending charges. The jail I was kept in was small – a holding cell more than anything. It was not hard to get myself out of that situation. A small fire, a mandatory evacuation, slip away behind the chaos. It had to happen immediately. If I had been detained a day longer, I would have been transferred to a higher-security prison. So. I’m fine, and I’m no longer imprisoned, but I’ve decided against returning home just yet. My escape will certainly heighten their pursuit, and I don’t want to lead anyone back to discover the rest of you. I will travel. For a while. That will make them think that my nomadic lifestyle is what has kept me out of the Society’s view, not anything more… …more collective. This is deliberate. The Internal Investigation Division will take my escape seriously for a few months, and then they’ll cool off. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, so I’ll need you to step up. I have complete faith in your ability to manage the Cradle in my absence. They respect you because you are my daughter, and I am Brigette’s daughter. You are part of the lineage of The Cradle’s creation. You are a scion, Sigrid, royalty, matriarchy, and our families will look to you in my absence. Haven’t I always taught you everything you needed to know? I should think after all my years of effort you would have learned how to step into the breach for me, for a few short weeks. It’s not much to ask, is it, that you put the group before yourself for a time? Of course I’m not asking you to take over full leadership. That would be absurd. But for the foreseeable future, I’ll need you to run things. You’ll need to monitor the food levels, and organize a hunt, if necessary. You probably will. Stores were looking low before I left. You can keep a few days worth of meat as it is, obviously, and store a few days more in the freezers in the barn. But the rest will need to be cured – we don’t have the space or the electricity to freeze it all indefinitely. Bern and Anya usually handle the curing, so you will need to speak to them before you arrange the hunt to make sure they have everything they’ll need. Anya will not like being reminded of her job. Canning and salting is her passion and she is very good at it, but she sometimes needs reminding to stay on task. You’ll be tempted to talk to Bern instead, who is kinder and more averse to confrontation, but Bern will not help you. Bern will not challenge Anya. You must challenge her. Lisette is another one to use caution around. She will treat you very well, Sigrid, but Lisette wants my job. She will see my absence as her opportunity to be your right hand, hoping that by the time I return, your popularity (with Lisette, the little bug buzzing in your ear) will be too great for the Cradle to return to me, an old woman with old ideas. Keep to yourself mostly, Sigrid. Schedule feasts and dances and attend them, but in the day-to-day, you do not need to be the receptacle for every complaint or problem everyone has. Know who does great work and lean on them to keep up that great work. Mark and Yelena have an excellent seed catalog, and Chotsani is a tremendous caregiver, especially with newborns. Ji-Yeon has 2-month-old twins, so Chotsani will have her hands literally full. I’ve spent a considerable amount of effort over the last twenty years or so identifying the many strengths we have in our little collective and putting them to good use, so really I’m asking you to do very little. Just let people continue to perform their duties, supporting them along the way. I’ll be in touch again shortly. As soon as I can manage. I’ll add a message to the rest of the group on the other side of this cassette. Please play it for them at the next evening meeting. Oh, and Sigrid, when we last spoke, you said Ole was telling stories about River Serpents and of Bergkonge hiding behind trees and beckoning with whispers. These stories scared the children, and even some of the adults. I sensed in your own voice you were afraid to venture too far out of camp. Do you still believe such fables, Sigrid? SIDE B My friends, my family, my Cradle. I am sorry to have been absent from you all for so long, and with no explanation. The details of my absence are not important, what matters is that I am well and that I have been thinking of you all. I believe there is an expectation, when one has been living in comparative isolation, to be seduced by worldliness when given the opportunity. To see a life that has been denied you, or that you have denied yourself, and deem it better than the life you have. I find the opposite is true. I have never been more convinced of the importance of our work within The Cradle. Family, my friends, truly is everything. Nothing proves this as well as its absence. Think of your children. Think of the indescribable joy of the first time you held them. The unshakeable bond you share with them. Think of the trust your children have in you. The way they run to you when they’re afraid. The tiny joys and sorrows they share with you. Think of the terrible beasts hiding in the forest that wish to take them from you. Not Serpents in Lakes or Whispering Figures behind the Trees, but uniformed sentinels of the New Society. They do not want us to be free. They do not want us to squirm from their grip. I have been inside their institutions, seen their ways, and they will not stop until they have devoured us, swallowed our children. The woods in Hedmark are dark, and shadows can hide hungry predators. Before the Great Reckoning, families raised children, drew together in communities, in tribes and in nations of shared ideas, giving of themselves for each other. We nourished the land and it nourished us. We fed our babies, and as we grew old, they fed us. We protected our neighbors, and they protected us. This has all been lost, in most of the world. It is our duty and privilege to preserve it. To preserve family. There will come a time when the world realises its mistake, and we will be ready for that time. There will come a time when we are called upon to be a beacon and we will be ready for that. I will not be standing with you, my family, in Hedmark for a time, but I’m not important. We are. You and your children and the relationship you share. I will do my part to keep us safe. I am only one woman, one mother, one root of this fruitful tree. Pour everything you have into the Cradle, into our community, for we must and we will survive. For the future happiness of the world, we must flourish so we can show the Society the way when our time comes. The millennium is upon us, and we will be the first to greet it. To ensure our survival there are two things you all must do now. First, and I am so sorry to tell you this from afar, but you must move campsites. I do not think I have given away the location of our home but there is no way to be certain of that, and so the only way to ensure we are safe is to move. I think we must move further into the woods. There is a lake a little to the north of our current location. I have given maps and instructions to Sigrid. Ole and Nell: take charge of loading trailers for the horses. Please only bring what is necessary and bury the rest. Leave no trails behind as you advance north through Hedmark. This lake is secluded and abandoned. Willing citizens of the New Society do not go there, because of superstitious lore surrounding mythical creatures there. We can use their irrational fears to our advantage. This lake shall be our sanctuary. Our new home. We will be safe there. The journey shouldn’t take too long – two to three days – but you should start on your way as soon as you can. I would advise you to establish a smaller group to act as a rear guard. They can do a final check of the site to make sure there’s nothing left to give us away, and follow behind you covering the trail. The next thing I’m going to ask of you all may be difficult to face, but I trust you know me well enough to know that I wouldn’t broach this if I didn’t think that it was necessary and that we are all capable of dealing with it. We need to bring preparations for possible hostility. Obviously we should be trying to avoid this completely if we can – this is why we will be moving after all – but it would be unwise to assume that all our actions in this area will be successful one hundred percent of the time for as long as we need them to be. We would be naive to assume that because the world is peaceful that it is also unarmed. The agents from the IID are armed, and if they are armed we can only assume they are armed against someone. They are prepared to wound, capture, or kill anyone who challenges the oppressive, artificial rules they have put in place, to tear down our families, destroy our nature, or make unrecognizable our humanity. Therefore they are armed against us. And we need to be armed against them. We have rifles of course, for hunting, but they will not hold up against the arsenal we must be prepared to face. I will do my utmost to equip us with more capable weapons, and if any opportunity presents itself to you in this area, do not hesitate to take advantage of it - guns if we can procure them, and even knives, especially since they are easier to come by. But keep your profile low. We cannot have arrests made for petty theft. They are already sensitive to our presence. Finally, we need to train ourselves. Anyone older than 15 and younger than 50 should be in top physical shape. We need to be prepared to defend The Cradle, our families, our way of life, and our sacred duty to this world with as much force as is necessary. I will be with you again to aid you in this training as soon as I can. In the meantime I will continue to send back messages to be played to you by my daughter, and your temporary leader, Sigrid. I wish you all luck with the move and hope for the future. I wish you life. I wish you a safe journey through the woods. Category:Transcripts